[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 7]
[House]
[Page 10415]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     DEEPER AND BIGGER HOLE OF DEBT

  (Mrs. CAROLYN B. MALONEY of New York asked and was given permission 
to address the House for 1 minute.)
  Mrs. CAROLYN B. MALONEY of New York. Mr. Speaker, in just 4 days, 
millions of American students will quite suddenly finally find 
themselves between a rock and a hard place. Unless Congress acts, the 
interest rates on subsidized student loans will double on July 1. This 
increase comes on top of sharp rises in public college tuition, and 
together means students hoping to improve their economic chances in 
life have to borrow more money at higher cost to get an increasingly 
more expensive college education.
  A new report by the Joint Economic Committee, on which I serve as the 
ranking Democrat on the House side, shows that two-thirds of our recent 
graduates now have student loan debt with an average balance of 
$27,000. For someone just starting out in life, that is a mountain of 
debt and averages about 60 percent of their annual earnings. That means 
that two-thirds of our college graduates today are starting out in a 
pretty deep, big hole.
  The question for Congress is: Are we going to just sit back and let 
them get into a deeper and bigger hole of debt?
  Let's fix the student loan problem and get America moving again.

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